Languages

Michelle Rempel on Pluralism and Innovation

Michelle Rempel, Minister of Western Economic Diversification

Interviewed on September 26, 2014 by Brenna Atnikov.

Atnikov: What are you paying attention to in Canada right now?

Rempel: The thing that strikes me the most is our pride in Canadian pluralism. As a country, we have a set of values, including equal opportunity, individual freedoms coupled with a sense of responsibility, and the possibility to retain our cultural and religious identities. As we face issues like energy security and religious extremism, this ability to have a national identity but still be a nation of many different cultures is going to become more and more important. We need to insure that, as our country grows and matures, we still have equality of opportunity for all people, both those coming to Canada and those who live here now.

Several months ago, when the conflict between Israel and Palestine flared up, there were demonstrations in Calgary. A physical assault took place at one of those demonstrations between groups representing the two sides. I thought, “That’s not Canada!” There are certain things we just don’t do as a country. We can completely disagree on policy or other things, but at the end of the day, that discourse of ideas and positions is how we develop as a nation. We have to be able to talk about difficult issues without coming to blows. For example, we value religious freedom, but we also value gender equality and equality in terms of sexual orientation. How do we square those circles? My hope is that we recognize that there are certain values that trump any sort of discrimination and that we call discrimination for what it is rather than veiling it. What we’ve built here is unique and special. If we don’t hold on to it and celebrate it and speak out when it’s threatened, then I worry for us.

Atnikov: If things turn out well over the next 20 years, what would the story be?

Rempel: Canada would be known as a world leader in terms of innovation and innovation policy. People across the political spectrum recognize that we need to use our enormous resource wealth to look into the future and develop secondary industries. I’m not just talking about making widgets but also about innovating in terms of the public policies we need to become a nation of innovators. With a little bit of pushing and coordination, innovation is something we could be known for—it could become our international brand.

If you look at the innovation ecosystem in Canada as a constellation, you’ve got the innovators—the people who are actually doing the thinking or designing the widgets. Those innovations have to go somewhere. If it’s a widget, is it going into industry? If it’s a new economic model, is it going to affect the federal budget development process? Then you’ve got all the other actors in the innovation community—government funders, not-for-profits, chambers of commerce, think tanks—but it’s kind of a disparate system right now. To bring order to this universe, to the big policy questions, we’re identifying where each component fits in terms of that conveyer belt and making sure that those pieces are well financed, well linked, and driving towards a common purpose.

Atnikov: What do you see as going particularly well in Canada?

Rempel: Our political system is a good one and is relatively equal in terms of opportunities for people to enter. If a young woman from a middle-class family in south Winnipeg can become a cabinet minister, anybody can. We’ve got a huge creative class in this country. People from all walks of life are innovators. More importantly, we’ve got the vehicles by which to get their best thinking plugged into our public policy decision-making process.

From 1870 to 1996, more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children were placed in residential schools and forbidden to speak their language and practice their culture. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) estimates there are 80,000 former students living today, and that the ongoing impact of residential schools are a major contributor to challenges facing modern Aboriginal populations.

Canada’s TRC is one of many commissions worldwide to undertake revealing and resolving past wrongdoings, mostly by governments. Other examples include:

South Africa

In 1996, President Nelson Mandela authorized a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to study the effects of apartheid in South Africa. The commission allowed victims of human rights violations to give statements about their experiences, but also allowed perpetrators of violence to request amnesty from criminal prosecution.

Argentina

The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, initiated in 1983, investigated human rights violations, including 30,000 forced disappearances, committed during the Dirty War.

Guatemala

The Historical Clarification Commission was created in 1994 in an effort to reconcile Guatemala after a 36-year civil war. The commission issued a report in 1999 which estimated that more 200,000 people were killed or disappeared as a result of the conflict.

In June, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission released 94 “calls to action” to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.”

The scope of recommendations range from child welfare to education to Indigenous language rights, and has recommendations targeted for private and public spheres of Canadian life alike. The document calls upon law schools in Canada to require all students to take a course in Aboriginal people and the law, for example. Notably, the document calls upon the federal government to appoint a public inquiry into the causes of, and remedies for, the disproportionate victimization of Aboriginal women and girls.

Canada’s employment statistics are much better now than they were 20 years ago. In 2012 for example, 61.8% of working-age Canadians were employed as opposed to 58.7% in 1995. The unemployment rate has gone down from 9.5% in 1995 to 6.8% in 2014. Youth unemployment has gone down too, from 16.1% to 13.5% in the same time period. The outlier in these trends is labour force participation, or the amount of working-age Canadians who are either employed, or unemployed and looking for work. Right now, participation is at the lowest rate since the year 2000, mainly because the “baby-boomer” generation is moving towards retirement. Read more about that here.

Housing preferences among Millennials, however, tend towards smaller, higher density housing close to activities, signs that changing economic realities and the generation shift will create more demand for housing in compact, walkable neighbourhoods.

Belfry-Munroe suspects that youth disinterest has to do with political parties. “There’s been a lack of engagement one-on-one with people since the 1970s, and a greater focus on mass media and now things like social media,” says Belfry-Munroe. “The other thing is that parties have become uncool,” she continues, “and I think that getting excited about the election without parties is like getting excited about the World Series without the teams. If you weren’t excited about the Blue Jays, you would not be concerned about the World Series.”

To extend this analogy, young Canadians currently aren’t even interested in baseball. What could work to change this would be getting other types of fans — soccer, golf, darts, you name it — engaged in baseball due to their passion for sports in general. Politically, this is the bridge that is missing for youth. The Blue Jays don’t matter if youth are removed from sports. Similarly, political parties and leaders would have little relevance if youth are removed from electoral politics.

“The generational effect is even larger [than the life cycle effect]. At the same age, turnout is 3 or 4 points lower among baby boomers than it was among pre-baby boomers, 10 points lower among generation X than it was among baby boomers, and another 10 points lower among the most recent generation than it was among generation X at the same age.”

— An excerpt from “Why Was Turnout So Low?” in Anatomy of a Liberal Victory by Andre Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil, Richard Nadeau and Neil Nevitte.

Rock The Vote also published a Youth Voter Strategy Report in 2007 that compiled many scholarly findings on this subject. You can find that here.

According to Elections Canada, “people are less likely to cast a ballot if they feel they have no influence over government actions, do not feel voting is an essential civic act, or do not feel the election is competitive enough to make their votes matter to the outcome, either at the national or the local constituency level.” Read more here.

The trend of youth voter disengagement persists across much of the developed world. According to the Economist, for example, in 2010 just 44 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 voted in Britain’s general election compared to 76% of those aged 65 and over. America saw its lowest voter turnout ever in its 2014 midterm elections, where just 19.9 per cent of young people voted, compared to an overall turnout rate of 36.4 per cent. This trend tends to change, however, when charismatic politicians reach out to youth. According to Politico, Barack Obama would have lost the 2012 American presidential election without youth voting — overwhelmingly for him. Read more here.